The methodology reveals the reasoning. It seems the plan is to abolish the agency and fire about 10% of the staff, mostly low level grunts. The remainder would be quietly reassigned to positions behind the bushes and under the flat rocks of the justice department.

Most likely, the people who did the complaining get the ax, and the people responsible get a cushy retirement.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Ever since the Nixon administration, My liberal moonbat friends have warned me that every sitting Republican president was surely about to declare a state of emergency and suspend the upcoming elections. I use to wonder if it was the pot or something else that gave them such ideas.

Now I know better. It's projection, the practice of assuming that everybody else is just like you are and is about to do what you would do if you were in their position.

Obama budget director Peter Orszag says that the only thing standing between Washington and good government is constituents. Rule by executive fiat is called for.

N.C. Governor Bev Perdue says that partisan bickering is such an impediment to straightening out the budget mess that suspending the 2012 elections to free the congress from the unreasonable demands of the proletariat is a valid approach to solving the crisis.

In Ms Perdue's case, may I help her with what seems to be a minor misunderstanding: It's not the elections the peasants want suspended, it's the congress.

It means precisely what I want it to mean, neither more nor less. Quoth the caterpillar to Alice. Here's another: With the presidents stock slipping, and actual valid arguments scarce,

"Electoral racism in its most naked, egregious and aggressive form is the unwillingness of white Americans to vote for a black candidate regardless of the candidate's qualifications, ideology or party."

Sorry, but if the candidate is unqualified, holds an antithetical ideology, and belongs to a party that's been hijacked by barking moonbats, it's not racist to not vote for him. To vote for him in spite of this, simply because he's black, that's racism.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Today, September 24th, is the 286th birthday of Arthur Guinness, founder of the brewery that bears his name. More or less. His actual birthday being misplaced somewhere, the management at the brewery picked Sept 24 to be the official birthday to stop the squabbling and get to the drinking.

This could be a QOTD, but there's more to it than just a thick crust of Big Mommyism:

As if to show how pissed he was at being questioned, he said his decision translates further that "no, Plaintiffs to not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;

"no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;"

And in a kind of exclamation point, he added this to his list of no-nos: "no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice..."

Judge Patrick J. Fiedler

Context reveals part of the logic here, that being that the plaintiffs wished to drink raw milk, and the state insists that no one may do this. Pasteurization is mandatory. Raw milk can carry a list of diseases and bacteria, and bovine tuberculosis is contagious. To that end, requiring pasturization to protect the public health makes sense.

As to the rest of the position, this looks like a classic case of Wily Coyote running off the edge of a high cliff without noticing his error. At least not immediately.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I've commented before on polling and how much weight to ascribe to them this far in advance of the elections, but occasionally, some actual data slips out. The Miami Harald is reporting that Sarah Palin is now within 5 points of the president among voters, which is moderately interesting, considering that she's not even a declared candidate.

Far more interesting is the one-line note a few paragraphs in to the article:

By a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent, voters said they definitely plan to vote against Obama, according to the poll. Independents by 53 percent to 28 percent said they definitely plan to vote against him.

If someone is polled over the phone, as I was last night, the questions run to "Do you plan to vote for the president?" yes or no. "If Sarah Palin was the Republican candidate, would you vote for her?" yes or no. The pollee, expecting the next question to be about his or her favorite candidate, may say no, only to find that Palin was the only Republican example to choose from, and you didn't vote for her.

I stand by my position that Obama would lose to an old yellow dog at this point, as long as the dog didn't apologize for anything, and was photographed lifting a leg on the New York Times building. When you're losing 49-36 against nobody, the opposition is going to have to run a pretty skanky candidate to keep you in office.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

You may have noticed the new logo over on the left sidebar, proclaiming this blog to be on the Gun Blog Black List. This is an interesting list, and I'm flattered to be included on it. One of my visitors, North, put me on the list, for which I'm grateful. I've always thought that being a gun blogger would be a lot more fun than carping about politics and the economy, but since that's what's biting me the hardest, that's what gets most of the attention. As a result, while I enjoy writing about guns, I had a hard time thinking of myself as a gun blogger.

Besides, being a top-tier gun blogger requires things I don't have, such as friends in the industry who send you free goodies to test and write up, or a collection of every military rifle ever issued by every army in the world from 1890 to 1919, complete with the matching pistols.

The ability to clearly write out ponderous pontifications would be a plus, but that's something I'm working on. Meantime you get the occasional bit of backyard Mad Science. Don't worry, I'm working on acquiring more guns and spending more time shooting them.

The columnless columnist, Kate Morrison, in a column in the Denver Pest today confesses to an urge to commit an act of vandalism. Interestingly, I'm inclined to volunteer to help her out on this.

What set the creative juices to flowing was one of those catchy ads by the Denver Water Board encouraging folks to trim their water use. These run to a billboard, for example, with only half the board covered, with the logo "Use only what you need" on the printed half. Very clever.

The ad in question featured two benches, one full-sized, and one much smaller with the messages "What you use" on the big one, and "What you need" on the little one. Kate thinks this is a great metaphor for incomes in this country, with most people making way more than they really need. Her version is "This is how much money you make" on the big one, and "This is how much money you need" on the little one.

I think the idea is nearly perfect. All it lacks is the arrogant image of the president on the big one, and the circle-D logo of the DNC on the little one. The message is especially poignant as the benches in question are located in one of the more affluent areas of town. I'm sure the drivers of every Mercedes and Lexus that passes by would be nodding their heads in agreement and phoning in donations to the bus line that runs from El Paso to Denver, bringing in new voters to help the cause.

Took the revolver out to the range and tried it out. Did the forcing cone work help? Hard to say. I only ran a dozen rounds through it but the groups were acceptable, considering who was doing the shooting. I didn't notice anything coming out the sides, the reaction/recoil seemed a bit smoother, and close inspection revealed no traces of copper jacket clinging to the entry of the barrel.

That last bit is important as I had chunks of copper plating stuck there the last time I cleaned it.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Gateway Pundit is reporting that a Muslim passenger on a bus decided to begin celebrating 9/11 by shooting his fellow passengers. He shot one in the back, killing him before being subdued by the bystanders and being held for police.

While it is unfortunate that the men he shot was killed, it is encouraging to see the rest of the public there fully involved in the notion that you are ultimately responsible for your own safety and well-being. The police will get there eventually, but probably not before the shooter has run out of bullets.

This is something I've been meaning to do for some time, but never got all the elements together for it.

The Pedal air gun has a good deal of power, and the thing to do is to fire it through a chroney at an appropriate backstop, weigh the projectiles, and publish the results. I had, after all been pushing this thing as a kids toy.

Most of the elements fell together this week. The scale, the Chroney, the weather, and an attempt at a backstop. Click the link and scroll down for a picture of the projectile, made from a 12 ga shotgun shell hull. For this experiment I fired 2 shots, one with a hull with the rear opening flared, and one with masking tape wrapped to make a close fit in the barrel.

Specs: Shell with flared end weighed 266 grains, and the one with the tape came in at 279 grains. A bit heavier than a .45 round.Air gun pressure was 60 psi.Measured velocities were 357 ft/sec for the flared projectile, and 366 for the one with the tape. This yields a power factor of 102, which coincidentally is the same as my CZ-82 9mm and right there with a .38spl service revolver.

The backstop is where things got problematical. Here's the setup:Draped over a ladder were 2 pieces of carpet, with a woven hemp doormat about 3/4" thick in between. The thinking here was that the resiliency of the rig would absorb some of the energy. It probably did, but to be safe, I added a piece of 2 x 8 in behind. Shot #1 penetrated all 3 layers and bounced off the 2 x 8. The carpet hanging down the back would probably have stopped the projectile, but the 2x8 was good insurance. Shot #2 stuck in the 2 x 8. At this point, I quit.Yes, through 3 layers of hanging carpet, and into the wood. The point on this is 1/4" dia and an inch long and the fuzz hanging out from under is the 3 layers of carpet.

So no more back porch ballistics. Any further tomfoolery will be done at the range.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

I shoot bowling pins with a Rossi .357 revolver, which generally serves well in the role. I do, however, get complaints from anyone standing nearby that it spits a good deal of debris out the sides, and I've been hit in the thumb by bits big enough to draw blood, so I decided to have a look.

Cleaned the gun thoroughly after the last match, and had a look at the forcing cone. For you non-shooters, the part of the barrel on a revolver where the bullet leaves the cylinder and enters the barrel is generally cut with a bit of a funnel, the angle ranging from 6 to 18 degrees, depending on manufacturer.

Quality is usually pretty good, but sometimes a bad one gets out. I seemed to have gotten on of the bad ones as the "cone" was a 45 degree chamfer that extended only 2/3 of the way around the barrel, and looked like it had been cut with a rat tail file. Searching the web suggested that most pistol smiths leaned toward an 11 degree cone angle, and that coincidentally, Brownells stocked the cutter.

The cutter arrived in 4 days, and the job took all of 15 minutes. I now have an 11 degree cone that extends the entire 360 degrees of the barrel, and is to a uniform depth. Everyone says the cone depth is important, and over cutting will reduce muzzle velocity by up to 50 fps, which doesn't sound like much, but no one is willing to even estimate the depth limits. I quit at a modest depth that left a bit of the old chamfer showing at the top of the barrel.

I'm told that this operation will tighten up my groups and eliminate side splatter. Haven't been to the range yet. Film at 11.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Righthaven, the law firm created to sue anyone who quotes one of their client newspapers, was informed that half their client base is going away. The firm began with Stevens group of papers, led by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and later expanded that to include MediaNews Group, which includes the Denver Post.

Of late, Righthaven has been taking a pounding in court with victims getting Righthavens suits tossed and their legal costs awarded. The firm is reported to be near bankruptcy at the moment.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

This was just too good to pass up. In today's WSJ, dead tree, on the editorial page, is a piece looking into the failure of the $825B stimulus bill which was supposed to get the economy rolling again. Two researchers went out and interviewed people who had actually received the money to find out what had actually happened to it. Executive summary:

"As is often the case when economic models are transferred from the blackboard to actual public policy, there was a gap between theory and practice." Garret Jones, Daniel Rothschild

An apt enough restatement of the all too common observation: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, however, the theory frequently falls short of expectations.

Monday, September 5, 2011

The pundits are awash in polls asking people which of 15 or so Republicans they want to see on the ballot, but so far nothing like this has appeared on the Dem side. Possibly for good reason. Questioning the president's legitimacy, up to now, ran you the risk of a pair of cement overshoes and a bath in the Chicago river. With Rhambo out of town, however, the natives are getting restless. The pundits at Salon are suggesting that The Won may not be all be was cracked up to be.

In one of the bloodiest weekends in recent city history, 31 people were brutally shot in roughly 48 hours this weekend -- including three kids at a house party-turned-shooting gallery in The Bronx.

This is normally the sort of thing you read about in connection with Chicago or Detroit, along with the Mayor's plea for the National Guard. This sort of thing is not difficult to deal with. When someone does something illegal you throw their ass in jail, or deport them whichever is appropriate. Magically, the crime rate goes down.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they predictably create for themselves a legal system that authorizes and protects it, a political party that enshrines it, and a 'moral' code to justify it."

One of the leftie pundits at Pravda-On-The-Platte is already looking forward to the glorious continuation of the peoples victory over capitalism by proposing that Colorado governor Hickenlooper begin aligning himself as a candidate for president in 2016.

Admittedly Hick has distinguished himself by not having hoards of unemployed folks demonstrating in front of the Governors mansion with pitchforks and torches, and his background is remarkably free of close associations with terrorists, so I suppose the Dems could do worse.

Of course there's his membership in the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Mike Bloombergs mutual admiration society whose premise is that if you suspend the second amendment locally like they did in Detroit and Chicago, you can achieve the rates of violent crime they there enjoy today.

Hick is benefiting from a divided legislature that prevents the best and the worst of the proposals from reaching his desk. As a result, on a scale of 1-10, with California being 1 and Texas being 10, Colorado rates about 4-1/2.

The biggest problem I see with Hick running in 2016 is that it's going to be very difficult to unseat an incumbent Republican.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

I notice I do much better at this if I've had the day before the match off. Unfortunately this only happens once a year or so.

Next weekend we shoot steel dogs in the .22LR class. This rifle competition entails steel cutouts of prairie dogs set out at distances from 35 to 150 yards which are shot either from nearest to farthest, or vice versa. I'm off this week, so I should be well rested for this one.

Big Sister is reporting that all is well, nothing is amiss, and we should go about business as usual.

"While there is no specific or credible intelligence that al Qaeda or its affiliates are plotting attacks in the United States to coincide with the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, we remain at a heightened state of vigilance and security measures are in place to detect and prevent plots against the United States should they emerge," Napolitano said in a statement.

Keep in mind that according to Big Sis, the average terrorist is an attractive white person, fashionably dressed between the ages of 30 and 50 who speaks English with no regional accent. If you know of anyone working in the front office of your company who fits this description, call DHS now.

GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- A federal advisory panel has recommended the creation of a nationwide database to follow women who have had silicone-gel breast implants for at least a decade after they had the surgery.

Although you have to give points for staying well below the radar with this approach.